VPT makes pollution free day for Visakhapatnam as President visits city

Because of the visit of Mr. Ram Nath Kovind,
President of India to Visakhapatnam on 7th December 2017, the
Visakhapatnam Port to take pre-cautionary measures at least for a day of his
visit, not to pollute the city. The Port management issued a notice to the Port
users tocover the coal cargo with tarpaulins and to water their coal dust
warehouses elaborately. Port also made adequate arrangement to water the roads
inside the harbour area to avoid the black air dust that pollutes the city
every day as claimed by various socio bodies in the city.

Visakhapatnam Port has been placed in the
central part of Visakhapatnam city and since decades the bulk cargo handling
including Iron Ore, fertilizers and coal was done in large scale which creates lot of air
pollution for the past so many years. Although the authorities were initiating
various safety measures controlling the pollution over city by raising green
cover and imposing lorry transportation restrictions nearby port, they could
not control the ever increasing coal dust that spreads into the city. The old
one town area where the port is situated has become a dark and dusty area
especially during the breezy days and several safety measures carried out by
port authorities yielded no result.

Meanwhile the Adani Bulk cargo terminal (EQ-1)
at Inner harbour has been allowed for larger panama vessels as the available
draft has been notified to ship owners as 14.5 meters. The Ships with 230 LOA’s
are now freely accommodable at the terminal thus enabled for unloading 70,000
MT of coal at a time through mechanical handling systems. Apart from this
another Private Bulk Terminal M/s. Vizag General Cargo berth also had a deeper
draft of 18 Meter and was handling bigger vessels already. In the recent past
M/s. West Quay Multi Port Ltd., a group company of Indo-French Joint venture ALBA
has taken over WQ-6 Berth and allowing bulk cargo vessels to handle large
quantity. WQ-6 has a draft of 14 Meter depth and the terminal berth is 255
meters long with a capacity of 6 million MT handling in a year.

In a way the port is
developing fast as a bigger port facility in the country for bulk cargo
handling and at the same time the authorities are yet to find alternative
effective ways to control the dust that affects the beautiful city of eastern
coast.